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15 Minutes of Play Project

I mentioned in my last post that I was working on making blocks based on the book, 15 Minutes of Play by Victoria Findlay Wolfe. Early in the morning nearly every day I created "made fabric" and cut it into 4 1/2" squares (because that was the square ruler size I had).

My Process:

One of the challenges in this book is to swap fabrics with a friend. My friend Joan and I traded a bag of scraps and had fun making blocks partially or entirely out of the other's fabrics. I knew I wanted a darker border with low volume/light blocks in the center. While paging through my book, I was inspired by some awesome improv roses and leaves on a quilt, "Sunday Best," on page 63 by Mary Ramsey Keasler. (Sorry, no photo of the quilt is available on the Internet but check out Mary's blog--she does some lovely work.) So then I made roses to applique on the top, which I have to tell you, take longer than 15 minutes to make. :) After adding some roses, I tried leaves (much faster than roses). It seemed like the quilt needed a focal point in the center. I started paging through my Piece O'Cake applique books because they have fun, whimsical floral patterns that I thought could fit and I wanted to hand applique the pattern. I mentioned this to Joan and she thought it might be out of place with all the improv I had going on in the quilt so I changed my plan. I decided to "make my fabric" and then cut it out into flower shapes using a template from a Piece O' Cake pattern, then raw edge applique it like the roses and leaves.

Here is the evolution of my project:

Here is where I left it today with an additional row of blocks to create more space between the blue tulips and the roses:

I am really happy with it at this point. I am ready to sew the blocks together and start appliqueing the flowers. I am going to try just pinning them down and straight stitching near the edges rather than fusing them. The bias stems are fusible, though. No idea how I will quilt it.

I have loved making these blocks and I can't recommend the book and this process enough.